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Femininity

For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship—the desire
to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience or anything
implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is
an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and
independent value-judgments. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer,
but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be
worthy of it and of the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as
a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is
specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.

This does not mean that a feminine woman feels or projects hero-worship for any
and every individual man; as human beings, many of them may, in fact, be her
inferiors. Her worship is an abstract emotion for the metaphysical concept of
masculinity as such—which she experiences fully and concretely only for the
man she loves, but which colors her attitude toward all men. This does not mean
that there is a romantic or sexual intention in her attitude toward all men;
quite the contrary: the higher her view of masculinity, the more severely
demanding her standards. It means that she never loses the awareness of her own
sexual identity and theirs. It means that a properly feminine woman does not
treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother—or leader.